Tuesday, June 16, 2009

A lost opportunity to talk to grandma

Earlier today I was driving down a side street and saw a great sight. An elderly woman was out walking with a young teenage girl and it appeared that it was a grandmother and her granddaughter out for a stroll.

Then I noticed that the two were not talking and that the young girl had ear buds and was holding an MP3 or other digital music device. I wanted to stop and tell the young girl to turn off the device and engage her grandmother, of course I didn't.

It was at that point that I felt bad for both of them. Some of my great childhood memories are those times that I sat at the feet of my grandparents and listened to their stories of the "old days." Those lessons gave me a perspective, even though I didn't get it at the time, that would come back to serve me later.

In recent months, my wife and I have spent a lot of time with her aging parents. They have shared stories I had never heard before and that my wife had not heard for a long time. It is a fascinating look into a time gone by, never to return.

Turning the TV off, or pulling the ear buds and talking to those a generation or two ahead of us might be the best entertainment of all.

4 comments:

inky
said...

Sometimes there is no substitute for an old-fashioned conversation. Unfortunately, we are raising a generation of young people who know how to communicate only via Twitter or Facebook. These are great tools that have their place, but it seems the very technology that was supposed to better connect us has the potential to either isolate us from each other or take communication down to the most shallow levels.

I feel the same way about how social media is being applied to journalism. I honestly don't know how many reporters are going to break meaningful stories if they're Tweeting instead of talking face-to-face with sources.